Monday, February 27, 2017

Bible Study Notes in Job- Chapter 30

Job 30

-Job turns his attention away from the good ole days to his current malaise
in this chapter. He is mocked by younger men now, whose fathers he wouldn’t
even have allowed to be put with the dogs of his flock. These were contemptable
people that were of no use to him. Their vigor, or might we say work ethic, had
perished from them. They were gaunt scavengers, that from want and famine, went
about gnawing “the dry ground by night in waste and desolation.” They plucked
the plant of the salt marshes (called mallow) whose food is the root of the
broom shrub. These were the ones driven from this ancient society because of
their laziness and thievery. They dwelt in dreadful valleys, in the holes of
the earth and of the rocks. They were fools without names, scourged from the
land, crying out among the bushes and gathering together under the nettles.
These despicables became Job’s taunt, and he had become a byword even to them.
His humiliation was indeed great. They would stand aloof from him and abhorred
him. They didn’t even refrain from spitting at Job’s face (Job 30:1-10).

-Why was this happening? Job says that the LORD had, “loosed His bowstring
and afflicted me.” His enemies brood arose against this innocent man of God.
They tripped Job up and built up against him their “ways of destruction.” They
broke up the righteous man’s path and even profited from his devastation. No
one restrains them as they do this. “As through
a wide breach they come, amid the tempest they roll on.” What a plight. Terrors
are turned against Job, he states, and these low lives pursue his “honor as the
wind.” Job lets the reader know that his “prosperity has passed away like a
cloud.” In a brilliant expression of what it’s like to go through this type of
torment, Job proclaims that his soul is poured out within him. Days of
affliction had seized him up like he was in a cage. There was no rest. At night,
his suffering pierced his bones within him and gave him gnawing pains. By a
“great force” his garment is distorted; it binds him about as the collar of his
coat. God, he concludes, has cast him into the mire (Psalm 40:1-4; 69:2, 14),
and he has “become like dust and ashes.” Job has called out to the LORD for
help, but he’s gotten no answer up until this point. When he has stood up, Job
feels the LORD has turned His attention against him. He really felt the LORD
had become cruel towards him. By now he fully realized the full weight of
persecution allowed by the Almighty. He states that he has been lifted up to
the wind and carried away with it. Job felt kind of like a kite. Now he
believed God had dissolved him in the storm. He just knew that God was bringing
him to death, which he describes as “the house of meeting for all the living
(Job 30:11-23).”

-Job poses a new question as the last section of the chapter starts, “Yet
does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his
hand, or in his disaster therefore cry out for help?” He maintained his
righteousness in saying that he wept for the one whose life was hard. His soul
had been grieved for the needy. But, when he expected good, then evil came, and
when he waited for light, the darkness came. This caused him to seethe within,
and he could not relax. Days of affliction were confronting him. He went about
mourning without comfort. He stood up in the assembly and cried out for help,
but there was none. He relates his condition as “a brother to jackals, and a
companion of ostriches.” His skin was turning black from the torture, and his
bones burned with fever. His joyous harp had been turned into mourning and his
delightful flute transformed to the sound of those who lament (Job 30:24-31).

-*Application* For Job, these were the worst of times. Sometimes, when we
feel lost, disappointed, unsupported, or abandoned, we too cry out for help
when there seems to be deaf ears and blind eyes. We start to wonder, “Will
justice ever prevail? Will redemption ever come? Will the righteous ever be
vindicated?” Sometimes it just seems so long in the offering when we are going
through affliction. In these times, remember from the outcome of Job that God
is still with us and that a new day will eventually dawn (Job 42:9-17). We sow
in tears, but reap with abundant joyful shouting (Psalm 126:5). God is the God
of the turnaround and the bounce back.